If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

Hello,

I’m giving a talk on the history of British advertising.

Although I have a good structure and some great examples I don’t want to miss anything.

So I ask you, dear readers: is there anything you would deem indispensable to that subject?

Seminal moments? Corner-turning ads? Famous characters?

If you wouldn’t mind commenting or emailing me (bwmkay@gmail.com) I’d be most interested in what the rest of you think makes up the history of this industry in this country.

Thanks

Ben

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aPkyPdubqDs

I like the VO. It doesn’t sound like I’ve heard one like it before and is an interesting contrast to the Tesco one below. That could have had this kind of VO and been better (but that still wouldn’t have helped with the strategic difficulties).

And it’s an interesting, empowering suggestion: if you can do that, why not this? So just do it.

Read a very interesting article earlier today (thanks, W).

I’ve long believed that in much of the world there isn’t enough work to go around. The process that keeps the world turning and its people fed and sheltered does not require the entire adult population of Planet Earth to be engaged in a 40-hour working week. This might explain why many of us are employed in jobs that aren’t even vaguely necessary (music, film, writing for its own sake etc.), while many millions more are so tangentially related to what the world ‘needs’ that they/we could die tomorrow, never be replaced and, beyond the circle of their friends and family, no one would notice.

To me, the astronomical bugger of this situation is that we haven’t managed to share out the necessary work amongst us all so that we can live well on ten hours of work a week. As the article points out, we have instead gone in the opposite direction, where we now work much longer hours, tethered permanently to our jobs by technology, contributing little or nothing to to the rest of the human race, or to our own existence. Crucially, many of us are also aware of the pointlessness of our jobs, and that just crushes the soul without you even noticing.

Imagine the improvements that could be made by allowing people to spend more time with their kids, or look after the less able or well off, or take to think of greater ways to nudge humanity forward.

Rather than me paraphrase the rest of the article (written by a professor of anthropology at LSE), give it a read yourself and see if you don’t find yourself nodding away in agreement.

(PS: I don’t think my job is pointless or inconsequential. How about you?)

Here’s the newish Tesco ad (sorry, I’ve been away, so its launched kind of passed me by):

My first thought was ‘Lurpak’: some lovely shots of food, a celebration of a actually giving a shit about food, normal people using food to make other food, a voiceover that explains how amazing and important food is…

Of course it’s tonally different(ish): this is a bit more middle of the country, appealing to people with a Fab ice lolly as much as food thermometer, but there are still plenty of food porn shots to make you think of a certain brand of premium butter (maybe that’s how/why Wiedens won the pitch).

And I guess the strategy is a bit more obvious than where we’ve been before: people think Tesco is a pile ’em high purveyor of exceedingly cheap kids clothes, books, toasters etc., so let’s zig a bit and remind everyone that we actually sell, y’know… food. And we care about food, because we’ve shown some lovely food lovingly shot (we also sell the Basic range so we don’t care that much about food, but we’re very big and we have to cater to the less well-off and all that).

It’s pretty likeable, but I think I was expecting a little more from the first big-ass brand ad of this client/agency collaboration. Tesco went to W&K and got a nice W&K ad, nothing more, nothing less. When the Christmas work came out there was a sense that it was a bit so-so because the agency hadn’t really had time to bed down the relationship. Now it feels a little like this is it. And that’s fine, but it ain’t going to Grrr us into starry-eyed affection.

PS: small point in the VO: ‘It’s not just fuel; something to fill a hole’ seems at odds with it’s ‘the tummy tamer; the get-up-and-go giver’.

To be a good ad creative you have to be good at a lot of quite different things: generating ideas; having the tenacity to see them through; selling them in; choosing the talent to work with and getting best out of them; having a good and original aesthetic sense; being cocky enough to believe in your work; knowing how and when to take criticism on board etc…

Then, if you’re chosen to make the step up to CD, there’s all the above (because you don’t get chosen to be a CD unless you’ve had a pretty decent career as a creative first) plus an entirely different set of skills: managing a department; managing an agency; knowing how to select the best work to pursue; giving feedback in a way that empowers; hiring and firing effectively; keeping morale high etc…

Which is interesting because you can be brilliant at several of those things, but if you’re not somewhat proficient at all of them there’s going to be a point where the journey comes to an end.

I mention this because when I was reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth, it occurred to me that being good at lots of different things is also necessary when it comes to being an author. Mr. Roth writes very elegantly but he also knows how to structure a story and he can come up with so many brilliantly perceptive truths that he’s able to pepper them through his novels at the rate of a couple per page.

In all modesty I’m many, many miles away from his brilliance, but unless I work on every single way that I fall short I’ll never get anywhere near where he is.

And you can have authors who are very good at some, but not all of Roth’s list: Michael Crichton can plot well but doesn’t usually turn a beautiful sentence; Will Self can generate ideas but his stories aren’t that compelling. And both of those examples are fine, but they show that there isn’t just a single skill called ‘being an author’ (or copywriter, musician, artist, CD etc.). There are many, and often they are diverse and self-conflicting. If you want to drive a page turning plot you might end up compromising insight. If you want to be single-minded in your focus to make great ads you might annoy people in the process so they don’t want to work with you in future.

Perhaps the real skill is recognising what you you’re best at and juggling or improving everything else to fit in with that.

But of course, that’s just another very particular ability that you might not have.

What is the great American novel?

Sharks make movies better (thanks, J).

Scottish parenting (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvw3uUOjwto

YouTube’s worst-rated videos all in one handy place (thanks, J).

Great houses in films:

Vintage WTF (thanks, J).

Paris as a Chinese shithole (thanks, G).

B3TA punctuation challenge (thanks, J).

Well written Yelp reviews (thanks, G).

R/GA film titles retrospective:

Literary classics made accessible. Sort of (thanks, T).

Jerry Lewis’s unreleased holocaust movie (thanks, G).

The wonderful gif dance party (thanks, B).

The Smiths + Charlie Brown (thanks, V).

Louis CK ‘Of course… But maybe…’ (thanks, G):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkjmzEEQUlE

Guillermo del Toro’s sketchbook (thanks, V).

‘Distorted rugs’ sounds boring, but this is cool (thanks, J).

It’s not often I write this, but: great poem (thanks, C):

Decapitated snake’s head attacks own body (thanks, J).

When I last wrote about looking for a new literary agent I mentioned that I had met with Darley Anderson, überagent of Lee Child and Martina Cole.

We left it with me promising to come up with a few more possible plots for the characters of Instinct and its sequel, Pursuit. Having done that to their satisfaction (it’s amazing the technothriller plots you can find by following The New Scientist on Twitter) I was sent a contract-type agreement which I duly signed and returned.

So far so good.

The next part of the process involved me sending my previous contracts (agent and publisher) to DA so they could dot the Ts of where they stood before offering Pursuit to publishers.

And that’s where it began to unravel.

The bottom line is that I have a book liked by a great agent, who was all ready to send it off. Unfortunately the c0mplications of my original contract mean that they can’t represent me. My terms with Penguin granted them 10% of the film rights to Instinct, and I have since been told by two agents that this clause makes it very difficult to get representation for a book related to Instinct. You see, if anyone wanted to make a film out of Pursuit they would have to negotiate in some way with Penguin, who kind of own a fraction of the film version rights of the characters. So if you’re an agent who wants to sell film rights you are having to deal with the buyer, the seller and the old publisher, as well as my ex-agent, who still retains his interest in Instinct.

Is that clear?

So now I have a choice: try to find an agent that doesn’t mind these complications (possible, considering Penguin have first option on an Instinct sequel. Most agents would love to sell a book to Penguin, even with the attendant difficulties), but maybe miss out on having DA represent me in future, something I would really like to happen.

Or leave Pursuit to rot somewhere, move on and write an unrelated thriller that Penguin would have no claim to (I’ve actually already written another novel that is in a completely different genre, but I’d like to build a thriller franchise and this other book feels a little one-offish).

I think I’ve lost most of you now, but thanks for making it this far.

If you are an agent or know anyone who is, and you understand the above problem, let me know in the comments. I’d love any advice.

Many of the creative side projects I feature on this blog have been at the request of the person behind the project. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless you want me to publicise your violently racist political party I’d be happy to tell the world what you get up to when you’re away from the office.

But occasionally I like to bring to your attention the work of someone in the industry despite the fact that they have not asked me to.

My friend Emer Stamp, erstwhile ECD of A&E/DDB and brand new mother of the beautiful Willem, has written an absolutely brilliant kids book, The Unbelievable To Secret Diary Of Pig (I can’t remember when it comes out, but thanks to Amazon you can just pre-order it and wait. She sent me a real copy so it does exist).

When she first came up with it she sent me a copy for my kids to read and they absolutely loved it. It’s so well written: heartbreaking, funny and completely original (did I mention that she’s an art director by trade?), and adults will warm to it to the same extent as their kids.

I know this all sounds like some kind of paid-for plug or favour for a mate, but it’s neither of those things. I’m pretty certain Emer would blush at my complimentary words because she’s that kind of person, but if modesty prevents her shouting from the rooftops about her excellent book I’m delighted to do it for her.

For those of you that don’t live in London, the lives of the ‘greatest’ people who lived in this fair city are commemorated by blue circular plaques that are attached to the houses they lived in. Regular readers will know that I can’t grace my blog with pictures, so here’s an explanatory YouTube clip:

Several years ago I noticed that I had very rarely heard of the people featured in the plaques. For every Jimi Hendrix there’s a few dozen Ira Aldridges, Thomas Arnes or George Basevis. The more I noticed this the more it dawned on me that our lives are utterly ephemeral. Even if you are one of the most celebrated people of your lifetime there is a very good chance that an university graduate with a few decent A-levels and more than a little curiosity about life in general will not have heard of you in any way. Not ‘Oh, hang on… She rings a bell’. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkiss.

And those are the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. If you applied that criteria to this industry I’d have thought no more than a couple of pure advertising people (as opposed to people who first worked in the ad game then went on to direct movies) would make the grade (I’m talking about Hegarty and Abbott). So if you’d like to be not-really-remembered by the vast majority of people who have lived in your country, you’d have to either build one of the biggest and/or best agencies of the last fifty years, and create a shedload of award-winners along the way. Juan Cabral will not be getting a blue plaque unless he returns to ‘adland’ and builds up some shop into fifty years worth of brilliance. And even then, probably not, because I might have neglected to mention that neither Sir Hegs or Lord Abbott actually has a blue plaque, and as blue plaques take three years to happen after shortlisting and have now been suspended through lack of funding, they almost certainly never will have.

So embrace the minuscule blip your presence on this earth will create. No one beyond your friends and family will give the tiniest toss a toss about you while you’re alive, and after you’re gone that number will dwindle to the square root of fuck-all. And that’s fine. It is the case for all but the smallest percentage of us. If you think anyone will give a shit about Vampire Weekend or Colin Farrell in 100 years time (when the planet will be under the water generated by the melting of the polar ice caps anyway) you are unfortunately quite wrong.

So what’s the point? Well, at times like this I like to call on Dead Poets Society:

Keating: “Seize the day. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Why does the writer use these lines?

Charlie: Because he’s in a hurry.

Keating: No. Ding! Thank you for playing anyway. Because we are food for worms, lads. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die… To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

Perhaps it could be bigger and brighter than the kind of thing that gets you a blue plaque. You could start here.

Interesting interview with Woody Allen here.

The quote that stood out for me is:

I never see a frame of anything I’ve done after I’ve done it. I don’t even remember what’s in the films. And if I’m on the treadmill and I’m surfing the channels and suddenly Manhattan or some other picture comes on, I go right past it. If I saw Manhattan again, I would only see the worst. I would say: “Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I could have done this. I should have done that.” So I spare myself.

Whenever I’ve read that from an actor/writer/director I’ve found it hard to believe, after all how can you improve your work if you don’t take a look at what you did to see how you could eliminate the faults for next time? Obviously that’s not been a great problem for Woody (although I’d say he still has yet to make a better film than Manhattan), so my theory must be bullshit, mustn’t it?

Well, if we think about Woody’s assertion a little longer it’s somewhat disingenuous. He’s obviously seen the finished version of Manhattan, or something very close to it, dozens of times. During the editing process alone he must have spend months watching it come together, and when that was over he must have seen it so many more times in the rest of the post-production process and in screenings to studio execs etc. So he might not continue to watch it years afterwards but he’s had the opportunity to analyse his work in great detail.

I suspect that his reluctance to return to his earlier work has more to do with its context. He made Manhattan about 35 years ago, so he was a different person making a different work for a different time and a different audience. In many ways the benefits of revisiting the work of 1979 would be counter-productive and possibly damaging. Some of us like to look at our old school photos because it brings back memories of a happy time; others find it a torture to be reminded of the crappy haircuts and sophomoric attempts at sophistication.

From my point of view I occasionally take a copy of Instinct down from the shelf and have a flick through. That’s mainly because I still get pleasure from acknowledging that I actually wrote a proper novel, and that Penguin decided printing a phrase like ‘the world’s most pointless erection’ was a good idea. But I don’t think I learn much from the experience, after all I’ve moved on a bit from the person who wrote that in 2009, and I certainly don’t get anything out of re-reading a plot that I spent 40-50 drafts improving.

So I can see where Woody’s coming from, but what about advertising? For a shortish period of time you might have little choice about experiencing your work as it graces the real world. I suppose you can turn away from poster sites and switch off the TV, but the chances of seeing your ad work by accident years later are pretty slim. Also, saying that you can’t bear to look at your ads after they’re finished is a bit daft: you need to see them in their natural media environment to judge them properly. Watching a DPS coming together on a Mac screen is miles away from turning a page in a newspaper to see how your work stands out and learning how impactful and tempting to read it might be.

Besides, unlike Manhattan, it’ll almost certainly be forgotten a few seconds later.